Friday, April 29, 2016

After a month of planning and prodding, our blog tour for Daniel Falatko's Condominium executed beautifully. Super hard core thanks goes out to the awesome people who so wonderfully opened up their blogs and took the time to put it all together.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

In
2010, Alex Kudera released his debut novel, Fight For Your Long Day,
a fast-paced and witty story about an adjunct professor trying to survive not
merely the day from hell, but a day that tests his perseverance as an
educator, a man, and a human being. We follow him minute-by-minute, as he
struggles to tend to his health issues, scrape together money to eat, and
encounters everything from murder to suicide to sexual temptation. Kudera
recently launched a new novel, Auggie's Revenge, a story about
another adjunct professor and the clusterfucks he gets into with
a slew of egotistical borderline sociopaths. At times, there's more
cynicism and revenge present than in a Tarantino film, but Kudera's
writing contains an honest clarity all his own. I've been fortunate enough to
sit down with him and delve into the behind-the-scenes/inner workings of his
process, background, and thoughts on the academic track.

L^2: In your own words, what is the major dramatic question summed
up in a single sentence?

AK: A
death-fearing adjunct philosopher struggles to break free from his academic
chains as he falls into friendship with men on the margins who lead him to
murder.

L^2: I’m all about edgy chapter titles that pack a punch. What was your
process of titling your chapters things such as, “Where sperm earn their
suicide and eggs play for keeps” and “MasterCard Marxists and 403b
Feminists"?

AK: In
fact, I sent the novel in without unique chapter titles, and the publisher
found some of the most curious phrases within the chapters and used those. If
I’m not mistaken, I either had numbers only or very bland chapter titles. Once
Matt Peters of Beating Windward did this, I may have tweaked or added here and
there, but I think it was almost entirely his smart move. I’m glad you liked
the titles.

L^2: Auggie is unapologetically crass, objectifies women,
commits white collar crime, is a homeless-hater, and when it comes to race, he
claims he has a “right to racism because he’d suffered all his life.” And enter
Jonny November who is a con artist. What was your intent to create characters
that might evoke strong disdain from readers? Were they literary tools to deter
from the narrator and make him seem more neutral and balanced?

AK: I’m
trying to describe real people in a real America, not watered-down or
politically correct versions. PC may have its place, it may be every teacher’s
best bet in the classroom, but it’s still a form of censorship that masks the
world as it is. I’m also interested in what extent, one can describe unlikeable
characters but get readers to sympathize or empathize with them nevertheless.
I’m also trying to write in humor, and it seems that some readers don’t “get”
humor at all in reading, and then the rest of us have many different tastes and
sensibilities. I also see plenty of racists and con artists in film and
fiction, so although I think some of my characters’ eccentricities may be
unique, I don’t see white-collar crime, homeless-hating, or rationalizing one’s
negative traits (i.e. Auggie’s racism, for example) as so far from other
entertainments. It’s interesting what you say, that Auggie and Jonny’s
negatives could work to make Michael, the main narrative voice, seem more
neutral or balanced. But Michael has his problems, too.

L^2: You've put so much work into this sophomore novel,
what is the biggest takeaway you hope stays with readers?

AK: As
I.B. Singer famously stated, the purpose of literature is to instruct and
entertain, and I hope to do that in everything I write. For Auggie’s
Revenge, I placed more emphasis on entertainment although I hope it is
instructive to readers to see how various characters live, what they think, how
they express their fears and frustrations, and whether or not they give away
their six-inch hoagies to homeless people blocking their path to warmth and
security.

L^2: In your eyes, how has the independent lit scene change over
the years since your debut novel with Atticus?

AK: I’ve
never been central to the indie-lit scene, so I’m not even sure of how to
describe it. It seems amorphous, and I’ve been told that I’m in it because I’m
a novelist published by small presses. I notice there is amazing subjectivity
and cronyism within every scene in America and this world, and this would
include the small-press scene, both within and outside AWP and English
departments. At the same time, even as we fail, as mortals will, it seems like
most of us are attempting some kind of objectivity when we assess books,
students, peers, and so on. It’s highly possible that American capitalism has
most of us in such bad shape that we can’t afford any loftier objectivity when
creating cool lists of indie presses or liking some statuses but not others on
Facebook. In different ways, we’re all participating in it. Whether we’re in or
outside academia, part of New York publishing, indie publishing, or
self-publishing, it seems like we’re inured in all kinds of little corruptions
and no one has the moral high ground, and so it becomes that much more bizarre
when our social-media threads seem full of “I know who the evil person is, and
I know who the good people are.” I hope Auggie’s Revenge sheds
light on this version of America. Maybe one day we’ll have an America where
more people with money, power, and connections recognize their economically
damaging relationship to many other Americans, and then throw themselves out
the window or better fund schools or fight for single-payer, but for now, we’re
stuck in the shit-show version that’s always been and doing our best to survive.
I don’t mean to imply that things are better or much different in other
countries, or that I’m not participating in these very things I’m laughing
about as I lament in Auggie’s Revenge.

L^2: As an adjunct-professor, how has your perspective
changed since writing Fight for your Long Day? Auggie's
Revenge seems to contain more frustration and jadedness in the
overall narrative.

AK: Yes,
I was responding to all the pain and lament and anger I was seeing from
adjuncts online, all the anguish they were expressing on social media. To be
honest, although I shared offices with some adjuncts in really bad situations,
I don’t think I was truly tuned in to how horrible the situation is until after
I published the “original adjunct novel.” I hope there are laughs in Auggie’s
Revenge—that was certainly part of the plan—but, yes, I intended to
describe a world for adjuncts and many other exploited workers and indebted
students as one where people are rightfully jaded and frustrated. At the same
time, I can’t escape the white male as flunky or pretentious jackass, so I hope
readers see a discourse of personal responsibility in my narratives, perhaps
one that runs counter to other ideas explicit or implicit in the books.

L^2: The track to a tenured professor gig seems to be riddled
with bureaucracies and hoops one must jump through like a well-trained dog.
What change(s) would you like to see happen so it’s not so
“paycheck-to-supermarket in a small studio apartment” living? What should occur
higher up the chain of command to make it easier for good professors to make it
in the academic world?

AK: In
higher education, as with the world in general, I’d like to see students
treated fairly regardless of their economic origins, and workers treated fairly
regardless of their status. Right now, 70% of college students take on debt to
attend, and their debt totals are about $30,000 upon graduation from a bachelors.
Quite obviously, that 30K does not include whatever they, their parents, or
grandparents were able to pay before or during college, or what the same
students may have to pay for graduate school.

All
college professors should have health coverage and pay that allows them to live
with dignity, and all young people should have fair access to education that
expands their horizons (liberal arts and foreign languages should not be cut)
and leads to employment (at today’s prices, the vast majority of students have
to think in vocational terms when choosing a major). To me, it would seem
normal for any society to treat its people well, but then we see what happens
in this world and are convinced normal must be the opposite of healthy or fair.

At
the same time, as individuals we have to avoid falling into bitter lament if we
hope to have any sort of peace or contentment at all. In the classroom, it
seems like teachers who ignore just how bad things may be for today’s students
and turn lecture or discussion into a fun intellectual show that gets students
smiling, even laughing, are the ones with the best chance of surviving in
higher education.

For
the tenure track, it seems like Americans from the most affluent backgrounds
and extremely driven smart transnationals are the most likely to survive and
become tenured professors. Fight for Your Long Day is the most
significant novel to come out of my English department during my time here, but
due to the branding of the university and to legitimize the writing track
(tenure track), some of the tenured professors do their best to pretend it
doesn’t exist. Others like the book.

L^2: What did you study in school, and is this the place you
thought you would be at this point in your life? What would you change? What
surprised you for the good?

AK: For
financial reasons, I had to graduate in seven semesters, and my main course of
study was Intellectual History or Political Philosophy although my major was in
English. I read widely in the liberal arts, so Michael Vittinger’s
course of doctoral study relates to some of my own reading interests. In
college, at times I worked extremely hard although too often, I focused more on
reading books, and often procrastinated when it came to writing essays on those
books. I wrote only two pieces of fiction in college, and neither was for a
fiction-writing class although I did get positive feedback both times. My
father lost his best job the summer before I began college, so I paid for more
of my own college than my parents or government. I was on a lot of financial
aid, and there were even moments when I was unsure I would be going or
continuing, and this undoubtedly had an impact on my worldview, particularly
since I was surrounded by kids from affluent backgrounds—more or less the kinds
of kids you see at every college, where even those of us on financial aid come
from more affluent backgrounds than most Americans.

But
anyway, because my father was out of work and we were in a recession (from Bush
I through early Clinton), I knew life would be hard and that America itself
might be a sucker’s play, and at the same time in my early twenties I used this
as an excuse to focus more on writing fiction and less on searching for
remunerative work. So I didn’t expect the world to be fair or that I would wind
up rich or anything like that. I sometimes have thoughts of regret, that I
wished I had majored in Y or done X, but on the other hand, I have some books
out, I’ve gotten some notice, I have a kid, I’m still alive, and so on. In the
airport a young man I taught 10 to 12 years ago at Drexel in freshmen English
knew my full name—“Are you Alex Kudera?”—and I’ve been in tutoring centers
where students can’t remember the names of current instructors, so I took this
as a positive sign. When things are going well for me, I usually expect
something bad to happen to balance it all out.

L^2: What advice do you have for aspiring writers, or those
looking to get into the adjunct professor track? Lessons learned, bruises
incurred, stabs you wish you could have avoided if you had the right mentor?

AK: For
aspiring writers, you have to read and write as much as possible, and stick
with it. We change and evolve and get better at everything we work hard at for
a long time. I’ve noticed with many careers and hobbies, it’s possible to
outlast others—so don’t give up and work your ass off. I’m not saying anything
new here.

For
adjunct instructors, try to be as flexible as possible while ignoring all the
baloney and don’t expect any sort of idealized experience. It’s like a lot of
other jobs that can pay the bills in America—the people in authority who should
be most completely ashamed of themselves are often the same people who’d never
be able to rise to that level of self-criticism. Every day, in all different
kinds of situations, I see increased possibilities for a pessimistic worldview.
And, of course, many to most of the students want to be smiled at and to hear
that everything will be okay.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer dividing time between San Francisco and London. Her debut novel, alt.punk (2011), explored the ragged edge of art, society, and sanity, viciously skewering the politics of rebellion. Her sophomore novel, Single Stroke Seven (2016), explores the lives of independent artists coming of age in perilous economic conditions. Both titles can be purchased through Casperian Books. Her short works have been published in Pear Noir!, Curbside Splendor Semi-Annual Journal, and Nailed Magazine, and her indie lit reviews have appeared in Small Press Reviews, The Rumpus, The Collagist, The Nervous Breakdown, Entropy Magazine, and American Book Review.

Alex Kudera's award-winning adjunct novel, Fight for Your Long Day (Atticus Books), was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. In 2016, look for his second print novel, Auggie's Revenge from Beating Windward Press as well as a Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day from Hard Ball Press. The e-singles "Frade Killed Ellen" (Dutch Kills Press), "Turquoise Truck" (Mendicant Bookworks), and "The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity" (Gone Dog Press) are available most anywhere books are downloaded. A lifelong Philadelphian until fall 2007, Alex currently teaches literature and writing at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Monday, April 25, 2016

1914 by Jean EchenozTranslated by Linda Coverdale Pages: 119Publisher: The New PressReleased: 2014Reviewed by Bronwyn MauldinI first came to understand World War I as the tragedy it was rather than as a series of history book facts (Archduke Ferdinand, secret treaties, trench warfare) thanks to an old song, Butchers’ Tale (Western Front 1914), by the Zombies. Perhaps it was the simple harmonium or possibly the plaintive refrain of “I want to go home/Please let me go home” that got to me. It was around that time that I read Dalton Trumbo’s great anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun. I found myself slightly obsessed – what kind of collective insanity could lead to such a war? Over the years I’ve read number of excellent books on World War I, each one adding to my sense of horror. On the fiction side are the German classic All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and the more recent Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker. For nonfiction there was Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan about the behind the scenes machinations negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, and To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild’s exploration of conscientious objectors of the day – their motivations and how they were treated. So when I ran across the recent French novel 1914 by Jean Echenoz, published in English one hundred years after the start of the war, I of course picked it up. Its story is a simple one: France is attacked by Germany, and five young men go off to war to defend their nation. A girl is left behind. A tragedy ensues. Most of them die, and, as most people did in World War I, they do so needlessly. This book touches on many of the well-known horrors of this particular war through brief stories about these six individuals: the introduction of airplanes into war, the hell that was trench warfare, the treatment of deserters, and war profiteering. At one point, after describing the stink and the filth of the battlefield, and how sappers might hang their greatcoats on the arms of dead bodies in no-man’s-land as they worked, he brings the chapter to conclusion with this: “All this has been described a thousand times, so perhaps it’s not worthwhile to linger any longer over that sordid, stinking opera. And perhaps there’s not much point either in comparing the war to an opera, especially since no one cares a lot about opera, even if war is operatically grandiose, exaggerated, excessive, full of longueurs, makes a great deal of noise and is often, in the end, rather boring.” Echenoz draws out his story in deceptively simple sketches. The French sense of “plot” can be very different from the American, which I would argue is a reason to read more French literature. Story lines are less driving, less clearly moving in a single direction. This can be frustrating for Americans who are accustomed to story lines and character traits delivered by a two-by-four. Echenoz is considered one of the great French writers of his generation, and the writing in this book is delicate and graceful. He moves back and forth easily between wide-ranging reflections on war like the one above, to a minute, detailed realism. In a single paragraph, for example, Echenoz lays out a list of the regulation gear to be found in every soldier’s Ace of Diamonds model knapsack – all forty items. As it comes to the close this thin volume feels like a light read, even as it has hit on so many of the key elements that made the Great War the tragedy it was. It is, in the end, a bit like that song by the Zombies, haunting in its simplicity. I wonder if this book can be fully appreciated by people who did not grow up with a more detailed history and personal family stories of World War I. Echenoz uses the names of places and battles along with jargon of the era as shorthand that I suspect is better understood by French readers. Even the title of the original French edition is simply 14. The English edition of the book includes a very helpful set of translator’s notes that aren’t about translation per se but fill in some of the missing details many people outside of France are unlikely to know. These notes are so informative they are worth reading even if you already know your Verdun from your Somme. If you’re not familiar with World War I, 1914 can be an easy-to-read introduction to its insanity. But don’t stop there. Any of the other books I’ve mentioned here – plus many more I haven’t yet read – will take you deeper into this terrible time when humans lost their humanity. Bronwyn Mauldin is the author of the novel Love Songs of the Revolution. She won The Coffin Factory magazine’s 2012 very short story award, and her Mauldin’s work has appeared in the Akashic Books web series, Mondays Are Murder, and at Necessary Fiction, CellStories, The Battered Suitcase, Blithe House Quarterly, Clamor magazine and From ACT-UP to the WTO. She is a researcher with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and she is creator of GuerrillaReads, the online video literary magazine.

The Short Version:
A woman called Honey grapples with, well, what being a woman means while three
Maenads torment her around the edges (and even, perhaps, directly).

The Review: Have you ever given much
thought to a sigh? Like, really thought about it - the movement of the body,
the emotion expressed therein, and so on? I confess that I never gave much
thought to a sigh (other than in the moment of shoulder-loosening release that
sometimes comes with sighing) until reading The
Shapes We Make With Our Bodies but now I find that I can't stop thinking
about them. About that moment of held-breath that seems, possibly, to go on
forever just before the release of the sigh, just before the exhale - and about
how long that moment can or could last. Meg Whiteford is clearly thinking about
it too.

She's also thinking about femininity in our modern
society, specifically (at least as I read this play) in the context of
relationships. Honey, our main character, seems to've been unlucky in love -
although 'unlucky' is perhaps an unfair term... but she has lost love, she has
"fallen prey to the diabolical look of a vindictive man", in one of
the best and most immediately quotable lines from the play. She is expressing
the breadth of her sexuality and being judged for it, from all directions. She
is cast out, banished, perhaps because of it (because of all of it) -
or at least she feels ostracized for it, as women in myth and story often have,
due to love.

The play is, as with anything from the daring team at
PlaysInverse, a non-traditional play. It'd be difficult to consider staging
this, at least by any traditional concept of staging... but, then, I
thought of no one so much as Chuck Mee during many sections of this play,
particularly when the narrator - because the stage directions are not so much
stage directions as they are interjections from a narrator (who may or may not
be the playwright) - jumps in to comment on behavior or when a judge calls for
order for 54 minutes or when a character is described as "a dragon dressed
as a woman dressed as a THERAPIST". That imaginative wilderness that
somebody like Chuck (or Mac Wellman, if I think back to the utter weirdness
of Description Beggared, or The Allegory of Whiteness)
lives in feels like it's right where Meg Whiteford is headed as a playwright -
because the play isn't necessarily about the staging so much as it is about the
words and the thoughts that they inspire.

In an early scene, Honey describes herself as infected by
language - and I get the sense that Whiteford is, too. There are moments here
where words become unstoppable, pouring out and creating a symphony of sound,
then meaning. Sometimes this manifests in the text in traditional poetic
structure (broken lines, stanzas, etc) but other times it is simply a block of
text like a paragraph. It's easy enough to glaze over or let one's mind drift
during these moments... but Whiteford has that very special talent of being
able to keep a hook in the reader's brain so that even if they do drift,
they're drifting on-point, as it were. It happened to me a few times, where I
might glaze over a page but find that my own thoughts were running parallel to
the thoughts spilling out on the page. This is a marvelous skill to have
in a writer and it shows a remarkable potency in such an early-career
poet/playwright/performer.

Whiteford is infected by language not just in the way
that she writes (which is to say the structure and the sound of the words) but
also in the content. There are references to everything from Shakespeare
to The Wizard of Oz, scenes inspired by horror films and legal thrillers,
commentary on the ladies who lunch as well as on the queer scene. She's a child
of the 21st Century - which is different, although not dissimilar, from a
millennial - in that she knows how to condense the sum of cultural experiences
she's encountered and turn it into something brand new. This, too, is a
skill that few writers have at any age or time. And if this is what she can do
with something as universal (and yet totally intimate) as heartbreak and
recovery... well, I can't wait to see what comes next.

Rating: 4 out of
5. Some moments drift a little far afield, coming off like a bit of an
exercise or a writing stretch - I.iii, for example, is one of my favorite
scenes but it also stands out to me as something tonally different from the
rest of the play. But the way these moments wrap back around to each other
creates a thought loop that sticks with the reader long after they've put the
play down. It's not often we see something new that speaks to femininity, to
love, to the universal and the specific - but damned if Meg Whiteford doesn't
achieve something rather like that here.

Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble. He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

For Review

A dark tale of slavery, immigration, and murder set on the west coast of Wales, this is a startling portrait of three ordinary lives taken to extremes. In the aching cold where night bumps into day, Hold hears noises confirming he isn't alone. At the edge of his nets, a rudderless dingy thumps against the rocks, prey to the ebbing tide. What he finds there changes everything. Meanwhile, Grzegorz works hard, with no time for rest and little thanks. All he needs is an opportunity; when it comes, with no apparent strings attached, what can he do but take it? On the other hand, the Big Man knows only one kind of life—where all that is needed are a code of honor and a reputation—but it’s leaving him behind and he’s struggling to keep up. One random technical hitch later and the three men are set on a journey that none could have foreseen, none can halt, and that ends as abruptly as it began. All three men want the chance to make their lives better and are tied together in a fatal series of decisions and reactions.

Late summer 1977: two identical robotic spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral. Their divergent paths through the solar system take them past gas giants, icy moons, asteroid belts, and eventually into the unknown of interstellar space. There, they will continue to travel on forever, the fastest moving objects ever created by humans. The Voyagers carry a message from Earth, a phonograph record plated with gold containing 27 songs, 118 images, and greetings in 55 languages meant to summarize all life on our planet for the extraterrestrials who might one day encounter the crafts. The Voyager Record: A Transmission is the record of that record: a history in fragments exploring how legendary astronomer Carl Sagan and his team attempted to press the entire human race into a single groove. Combining elements of poetry, flash fiction, and essay, Anthony Michael Morena creates a collage of music, observation, humor, and alienation. Giving the 38-year-old original playlist a B-side update, Morena’s The Voyager Record calls out to its namesake across the billions of miles of emptiness: Send more answers.

A succinct and witty literary venture that tells the strange story of a priceless treasure discovered in East Anglia on the eve of World War II. In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find. This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind.

Will you escape the giant monsters that are rampaging the fuck out of your city? Aliens are invading the Earth and their ray guns turn people into violent punk rockers. At the same time, the city is being overtaken by giant monsters tougher than Godzilla and Mothra combined. You can choose to be a lone scientist trapped in a secret government lab on a remote island swarming with monstrous killer insects, a badass punk rock chick with a green mohawk caught in a bar room brawl as the city goes up in flames around her, or a desk jockey forced to endure tedious office duties while his building is being attacked by a gargantuan centipede with claws the size of sports utility vehicles. Which character will you become? To become the scientist, turn to page 149. To become the punk chick, turn to page 11. To become the office drone, turn to page 77. But choose wisely! You might conquer a fleet of alien saucers with the help of a high-flying monster-slicing super cat or drown in a giant monster's pool of sperm as it butt-fucks your office building. What will happen next? That's up to you! When the story hits a fork in the road, you get to choose which path to take. The ending will always be different depending on your decisions. Not only that, you can read this book over and over again for a new experience every time!

Friday, April 15, 2016

I love authors who have a wicked sense of humor and a love of the satirical. Meet Tony Newton, author of the upcoming #ImZombie: A Zombie Mosaic Novel. In today's post, he's created a survival guide for writers. Go on, check it out......

Top 10 New Writers Survival Guide Tips!

This guide won't kill zombies but
may help you to become a successful writer!

1.Just Write it!

This may sound crazy, but long before you attack,
rewrite spell check, go on the hunt for bad grammar, and go through every
paragraph of your new book, just write the words down! Don't even look at what
you're writing, just get the words written down on paper. I sent a letter to my
favourite author Ray Bradbury when I was in my teens, he sent me a letter back
with one tip which he wrote in bold marker pen "Just write it",
that is the secret! So just get your words down first! and in the words of Ray
Bradbury "Just write it".

2. Write your first draft on paper!

This may sound alien to everyone in this tech driven
world but it's very handy to write your first draft on paper. Okay, it may
require a little more work to do this, but writing this way will connect you
with the words on the paper, just like an I-pad you can carry a paper and pen
everywhere very easily, for some reason this just works! Your writing won't
vanish as you forgot to click save draft (unless your OCD partner tidies it
away)! Give it a try! I know so many authors who always do their first
draft on paper!

3. Don't Give up?

Never, ever give up! keep going no matter what!
Don't let other people's opinions put you off, keep at it, keep going! Just
write that book! We are living such great times, the best time ever in history
for writers especially new writers, the options available now are beyond
amazing! Every new author dreams of having a bestseller on the shelf of their
favourite book store, but in reality this won't happen for 99% of new writers,
try and get your book published, try and get an agent to represent you but
failing that get your book out there through sites like Smashwords or Amazons
CreateSpace they offer to sell the eBook and a physical copy of the paperback
on a print on demand basis with no expense to the author!

4. Get your own website!

It is best to have your own website featuring all of
your work you can have links to Amazon, and have blog content direct through
the site. Another great idea is to offer signed editions of the book direct
from you! choose a .com if you can or a .net, I know there are hundreds of
domain name options out there but always go for the .com first or the very
least a .net!

5. Get your work out here any way you can!

Send your work out to publishers, agents too, as
many as possible even send it to ones that say we don't except unsolicited
manuscripts! Send a sample along with your email around ten page sample along
with the synopsis if they like the idea they will read the first ten pages at
least they won't want to miss out on the next best thing!

6. Create a blog!

Creating your own blog is a great way to get regular
readers to view new and updated content from a reader they like! If your book
is about world war 2 give your readers some free content updated articles on
the subject!

7. As soon as you finish one project start planning your next
book!

Be ready to start your new book after your first
book is out! Don't attempt to start writing both books at the same time this
will confuse you, I know you will be buzzing with excitement and the creative
juices will be flowing but put all of your efforts into one project at a time!

8. Think outside the box!

Whatever you do try to think outside the box, go for
it! Try new things, try crazy ideas to promote your book! Get out there, if
your book is a horror book go to every horror convention set up a stall and
sell your book, connect and make friends with likeminded people! Get your new
book seen by as many people as possible, leave it in coffee shops donate a few
copies to a charity shop, A fellow author I know gave 50 copies of his new
science fiction book to a free book stall at a sci-fi convention,
the books were all gone with an hour, he placed a book mark inside
the book containing links to his work and online website!

9. Video's!

Make video's, even a book trailer to promote your
book! If your book is about fashion start vlogging about fashion tips on You
Tube! if your book is about spirituality create some content with experiences
and interviews with other people about their experiences. The more you get
content out there the quicker your audience will grow.

10. Get Social!

Create all social media accounts and promote your
work through these! Don't just keep spamming away with your own content,
give other useful links as well, mix this in with your own content and you will
see great results! provide fresh daily content with links to your work mixed
in! don't just retweet the same link hour after hour, day after day. Twitter
seems to be the best in terms of promotion as you can specify certain hash tags
to target your audience!

Hash tags will allow you easily to target and find
new readers of your work!

You will see great benefits from adding hash tags
from your tweets, I suggest using a maximum of 4 hashtags per tweet. Hash tags are also useful for researching new
writing opportunities, competitions and writing jobs! Below is a list of some very useful hashtags to help
you on your journey of becoming a successful writer!

Tony
Newton is the author of "The Zombie Rule Book: A Zombie Apocalypse
Survival Guide" and the upcoming title "#I'm Zombie: A Zombie MosaicNovel" the creator and producer of the upcoming zombie mosaic film
"Virus of the Dead". He loves all things horror, obsessed by zombies
and collects old school VHS tapes just for fun. "The
Zombie Rule Book: A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide" is out now and
available from Cosmic Egg Books. #I'm
Zombie: A Zombie Mosaic Novel is a zombie book featuringmosaic accounts from the day the zombie
apocalypse strikes the globe, the book see's the horror unfound through an
online forum to found notes from doctors and survivors! "#I'm
Zombie: A Zombie Mosaic Novel" will be released on May 27, 2016 available
from Cosmic Egg Books.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

The
Short Version: When César Aira was a boy, a seamstress lived in his town and
had a son about his age. When she believes that the son has disappeared, she
jumps in a cab and tears off into the Argentinian countryside with a hilarious
and fantastical set of pursuers that include her husband, an angry bride-to-be,
the wind, and maybe even the author himself...

The Review:After falling under Aira's spell with An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter,
I rushed out and picked up nearly all of the rest of the works currently
available in English (thanks, New Directions). It was like a compulsion - like
something out of an Aira story, perhaps - in that I simply could not rest until
I had the total sum of his [English] output on my bedside table. I did this,
getting all of them except The Musical
Brain (his collection of short stories) at no inconsiderable immediate
cost... and found myself faced with a whole new problem: which one should I
read next? I knew next-to-nothing about Aira's work, having not even read the
back covers of most of these books, and so I was going in blind. After reading
the first page of several, I opted for The
Seamstress and the Wind.

I
cannot speak to the larger sense of Aira's oeuvre, but I immediately began to
believe that ...Landscape Painter
might well be an outlier. This novel was immediately so much stranger and more
loosey-goosey, opening with some direct address from the author himself -
almost diaristic, in fact. Aira tells the reader that he's had a title -
"The Seamstress and the Wind" - in mind for a while but hasn't
figured out the story to go with it beyond those two characters. He tells
himself to be open and to go with whatever comes to mind - and so he starts
recounting stories of being a young child, of a moment when he disappeared
briefly (and perhaps magically) for a few hours. That moment of childish
confusion, believing that it was his friend who disappeared, is what incites
the novel's "plot", if we want to call it that.

The
thing is, the friend definitely didn't disappear - and so there is a level
of what I think I have to call absurdity to the proceedings from very early on.
Or perhaps not absurdity but fantasticality in the most basic of ways: we never
know what will happen next, except that it will be unconstrained by any bounds
of reality. Even late in the novel, Aira occasionally drops a comment about how
the whole adventure was silly because the boy hadn't really disappeared and, before
long, everyone in the book sort of forgets that that's why they were tearing
off across the pampas anyway. And meanwhile, Aira is interrupting the narrative
with more of these diaristic interjections: he's writing in a café in Paris and
he's struggling to focus (and later, in a scene that felt Ionescoian, to leave
the café).

All
of this unabashed and unconstrained frivolity should've been infuriating. I
could see how this book, taken at the wrong moment or even given to the wrong
reader, could leave a bad taste in the mouth. But this "flight
forward" style of Aira's, this sense of just continuing to invent even if
it flies in the face of everything that came before or even if a plot is left
totally unresolved - it's actually rather joyous. For writers, there is a
lesson to be taken here: allow yourself to just invent without constraints. Let
the story develop however it will and see what happens from there. Aira is
doing that, drawing the reader's attention to it quite deliberately, and it is
through the strength of his imagination that it makes for oddly compelling
reading.

There
are also surprisingly deep thoughts to be found it what might, at first, seem
like nothing more than a yarn spun on a whim. For one thing, Aira's narrative
interjections - that begin to recede slowly but surely before slamming back
onto the page - mirror the process of writing and of our distracted attention
spans as both creators and consumers: we're in it, in it, in it, and then
WHAM-O, something breaks our attention. But even little exchanges like this one
have a marvelous potency:

On
the one hand, it is the classic adventure story line of having a boring,
uneventful life until adventure strikes. But on the other hand, perhaps because
it comes late in the novel and perhaps because it is a conversation between the
two characters of the title, there is something grand about this sentiment.
Even if the reader has heard it before, it lands quite effectively here -
especially because so much has happened. A car accident, a strange road
chase, a poker game and a hotel and a birth out of David Lynch's nightmares...
so much has happened and so much will continue to happen, things that seem so
beyond comparison precisely because the novel starts with such unassuming
awkward mundanity: an author, struggling to come up with a reason for the story
he has set out to write. It shouldn't work, but it does - and it does so well.

Rating:
4 out of 5. The circuitous opening, a little repetitive and meandering as Aira
tries to land on the story he wants to give to this title he's come up with,
can be a touch frustrating - but once the journey is underway and the reader
has sussed out exactly what the author is up to, it latches on with a
delightful trill of energy. I laughed out loud, both at humor and absurdity,
and I was impressed by the way that Aira writes only to his own satisfaction as
the end draws near. Even though the novella felt slight throughout, it still
was a joy and a delight. Now to go pick the next one...

Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble. He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Back by popular demand, Books & Booze, originally a mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC challenges participating authors to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist.

Today, M.M. Wolthoff is set to give you alcohol poisoning! There's a lot of drinking going on in his novel The West Texas Pilgrimage. Check it out:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WARNING:
This book is not for the faint of Liver.
Perhaps I should have included this disclaimer in the epigraph of The
West Texas Pilgrimage. I recently
received a less-than-positive book review in which the reviewer commented that
she didn't like the characters because all they seem to do is drink and
objectify women. While I respect her level of disgust with my character's
behavior, I question what planet she lived on when she was in her early
twenties. Wherever it was, I can assure you it was nowhere near the one I
inhabited.

It is
true that there is a lot of drinking in The West Texas Pilgrimage. Part of it is the way that the main
character, Hunter, attempts to deal with the constant self doubt and repetitive
negative thoughts brought on by his chronic depression and obsessive compulsive
disorder. While maybe not the best thing
for us health wise, nor particularly effective, I think most of us can relate
to the occasional self medicating for stress, disappointment, insecurity, or
other common ailments.

There
is no question that we Texans like our booze. There is a streak in many Texans
that stems from the wild origins of the state.
Beer drinking is more or less, mas or menos if you live south of San
Antonio, a recognized state past time. If you've ever floated down the
Guadalupe or attended a live music show at Floore's Country Store, God bless
the staff that have to pick up all of the beer cans and bottles littering the
dance floor, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Speaking
of music, have you checked out the soundtrack, found on Spotify through the
website, to The West Texas Pilgrimage? This collection of mostly Texan
songwriter's music is featured in order throughout the book and, by the way, a
fantastic playlist to have a few drinks to. I encourage you to turn on the soundtrack, pour your
preferred drink from the list below, and dive into the book; I think you'll
find it to be a wild ride.

SALUD!

The
West Texas Pilgrimage drink list

(in order of consumption):

Cuba
Libre: Bacardi white rum, Coca Cola, and lime.

A
favorite of south Texans and always a good coastal drink, Hunter likes to drink
"Cubas" during the day in a deer blind.

Coors
Beer: no explanation needed.

Rumor
has it that the name "Silver Bullet" originated in a bar on the south
side of San Antonio. Taste the Rockies and make sure those mountains are
blue! The original variety, commonly referred to as the "Yellow
Belly", is a favorite out west.

Scotch
Whiskey: single malt fifteen year old Glenlivet.

What
would a good Texas drinking story be without whiskey? Cinco White prefers the
single malt variety served on the rocks or with no more than a splash of water.

Substitute
V8 for the Clamato and you have all of your essential vitamins for breakfast,
and a hangover cure.

Lone
Star Beer:

Originally
brewed in San Antonio in 1884, this is the National Beer of Texas.

Modelo
Especial Cerveza:

First
bottled in 1925 and brewed in Mexico City, it is this author's opinion that it
beats the pants off of Corona.

Val
Verde Winery:

Based
in Del Rio, this vineyard's claim to fame is that it is the oldest continuously
running winery in Texas. Prohibition be damned, they stayed open! They offer several
types of wine, but their port is what is truly special.

Ma
Crosby's Margaritas:

This
Acuna Mexico border town icon was immortalized in George Strait's "Blame
it on Mexico".

The
Starlight Theatre Margaritas:

They
have no less than eight recipes for margaritas at the Starlight in
Terlingua. Whether you order the
Scorpion or the Prickly Pear'ita, you will not be disappointed.

2004
Silver Oak Cabernet:

This
Napa Valley produced cab is on the menu at the 12 Gage Restaurant at the Gage
Hotel in Marathon, Texas. You can pair a
bottle with the stuffed quail, a ribeye, or an unbelievable chicken fried steak
with roasted jalapeno cream gravy for a five star dining experience in the
middle of nowhere West Texas.

The
characters end up in the White Buffalo Bar in the Gage Hotel and order a round
of top shelf tequila shots. While not specific in the book, the two mentioned
above happen to be my favorite.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Matthew Martin Wolthoff lives in McAllen, Texas with his
wife, Lucy Ann, and three children Hunter Ann, McCoy Martin, and Kerr Dunkin.
He grew up in a military family, living all over the world until finding home
in south Texas where he went to high school in San Antonio. He is a graduate of the United States Air
Force Academy and has a masters in business administration from the University
of Texas-San Antonio. His parents instilled
a passion for reading and writing in him early in life that grows stronger
every day. An avid outdoorsman, he finds his inspiration, and peace of mind, in
the shallow waters of the Lower Laguna Madre and the wilderness of the south
Texas brush country. His first west Texas pilgrimage was in 2010. It was a life
changing event.

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I have been buried beneath small press and self-published review copies since 2009. My passion for supporting the small press and self publishing communities has driven me out into the world wide web to demonstrate alternative ways to spread the word about amazing publishers, authors, and novels you might never had heard of. Feeding your reading addiction, one book at a time.